The Cost of Pain

Recently, star quarterback Tom Brady was injured and lost to his team for the season.  A painful knee injury was incurred when a lineman rushed into his knee while he was passing the football.  What is the cost of his pain?  To quote Newsweek: “Brady, the consensus best player in the NFL’s gold-standard franchise, is a rare commodity: a Super Bowl winning, super-model dating (Gisele Bundchen), MVP quarterback, who is equally at home on the cover of a sports magazine as he is in the pages of a glossy celebrity tabloid. In short, Tom Brady is money. He makes lots of it, and generates much more of it for the NFL and the networks that broadcast his games. For the past few years, the NFL has taken in an average of more than $3 billion in annual television revenue, and recently, Brady has been the sport’s biggest draw.”

“You can’t really quantify it,” says CBS Sports President Sean McManus, whose network was perhaps the biggest beneficiary of Brady’s record-setting MVP season, and has a lot to lose from a year without him. CBS pays the NFL $622 million a year for the rights to its AFC package, and carries more Patriots games than any other network. Last year, the Patriots were ratings kings…..the Patriots played the Indianapolis Colts, on Nov. 4, which turned out to be the highest rated program of the entire 2007 fall broadcast television season, with 33.8 million viewers, CBS was charging more than $700,000 for a 30-second commercial. (According to a report by The New York Times, the most expensive 30-second spot for a drama series last year was $419,000 for ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.”)

This illustration simply shows that painful injury to Tom Brady affected a lot more than Tom Brady’s knee.  In the long run, the pain in his knee will be gone in years to come, but he will have lost a valuable year in his prime.  He will have lost another opportunity at the Super Bowl (& how many can an athlete realistically expect?), a key opportunity to tie Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana with four Super Bowl rings and go down in history as one of the greats, and an opportunity to put his name on other football career records in his sights.  In addition, there is the price of pain suffered by fans, media, fantasy league participants, sports bettors, and the NFL itself.

So perhaps it’s time to ask yourself, what is the “price” of your pain?  Do you refrain from playing with the kids or grandkids because of the hurt?  Have you been forced to stop participating in your chosen sport or activity due to pain?  Have you gained weight because you can’t move like you used to?  Have you let yourself become an anchor at family outings and special occasions such as weddings and anniversaries.?  Has your earnings capacity dwindled?  Are you “no fun” to be around anymore?

Perhaps it is time for you to renew your efforts to eliminate you pain source.  Put away the depressing outlook that accompanies being resolved to accepting pain.  Renew your efforts and take some time for new research on non-prescription alternatives.  Look into therapeutical solutions.  Can your lifestyle or diet be upgraded and help alleviate the pain?  Many folks look at 2 or 3 possible pain remedies, and if they don’t work, they give up and write it off to old age or bad fortune, without taking into consideration the “cost” of pain.  Envision the things you used to do before pain, and see yourself doing them again-whether it’s rejoining your softball team, or something simple like picking up your granddaughter.  Invest in yourself.  It’s your responsibility to keep your pain from affecting not just yourself, but others!